Glen-i

I really have been falling behind on my write ups here, huh? Boy, this game. Where do I even begin? Well, I suppose the same way I normally do. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is an RPG developed by Monolith Soft which released for the Switch back in July. Much like the previous games in the series, it mixes MMORPG style combat with big massive places to explore, as well as plenty of UK regional accents. The game begins with a young kid called Noah, who lives in Colony 9 from the first game. There's a festival going on, and everyone's having fun. That is, until time freezes for everything except Noah and he suddenly finds himself in the land of Aionios, where he seems to have aged about 10 years, and has no memory of ever being in Colony 9. In Aionios, everyone is born at about the age of six, and only lives for 10 years. That already sucks, but it gets worse, those 10 years are purely spent in a big massive war. Noah finds himself fighting for the army of Kevus, alongside his fellow soldiers, Lanz, and Eunie. During yet another skirmish, they encounter Mio, Sena, and Taion, soldiers from the opposing Agnus army. Stuff happens which forces these six characters to reluctantly journey across all of Aionios together in order to find out what the bloody hell is actually going on. I won't go into much detail, but this plot, it goes places, and it is one hell of a ride! Probably one of the most engaging RPG plots I've experienced. The cutscene direction is spectacular and the voice acting is spot on. It's hard for me to find fault with it, and I won't go into spoilers, so I'll just move on after I show you this. Eunie reminds me a lot of Syrenne from The Last Story, that sort of foul mouthed, no nonsense, woman always makes me smile. Easily my favourite character in the game. If you've played any of the Xenoblade games, you'll know what to expect. Big massive areas to explore broken up by fighting all sorts of things. It sounds like an open world game, which would make it the worst thing ever for me, but it's not open world, it's surprisingly linear, which makes infinitely better then every open world game you've ever played. Something about the three Xenoblade games (X is open world, and therefore doesn't count) really nails the balance between exploration and linearity, if I ever got bored of exploring, I always had the option of carrying on with the main plot. Not that I ever did, thanks to the excellent side quests. Xenoblade is kind of notorious for having bundles of side quests, most of which aren't very interesting, just stuff to do while you run around big massive fields. Xenoblade 3 bucks that trend with the "Hero Quests". Fully voiced scenarios that focus on various NPC's you encounter with their own problems for you to help out with. Finishing them is well worth it, because you effectively recruit the "Hero" to occupy the seventh slot in your party. Not only that, but you also get that Hero's class to use on the main six. Yes, because if there's one thing I never knew I wanted in Xenoblade, it was Bravely Default job shenanigans! Classes are catagorised as either Attacker (Focusing on dealing big damage), Defender (Draws enemy attention, and tanks hits), or Healer (I don't have to explain that one, do I?) and have a plethora of abilities for you to mess around with. Winning fights levels your classes up, which unlock "Master Arts", allowing you to put certain abilities from one class on to other classes. Man, I love me some mix and matching in RPG's, especially when you can come up with some completely broken setups. Suffice to say, by the time I finished, I may not have actually had any Defenders on my team. That would be one thing, but the game keeps developing its mechanics as you progress, and hell, it throws in loads of new ones as well. I'd be here all day if I explained them all. But it can be a bit overwhelming to newcomers, having to juggle all this stuff in your head. The visuals aren't gonna be the best the Switch has to offer, but they are a hell of a lot better then Xenoblade 2's. The resolution isn't completely terrible, even in handheld mode. I don't know what Monolith did different here, but it helped. So kudos all around there. The music, on the other hand, is astonishingly good! The fact this game didn't win the "Best Soundtrack" in this year's Game Awards should be proof enough that the Game Awards is a sham. Flutes play a big part here, and the game just keeps belting out bangers throughout! Then again, Xenoblade has always had great soundtracks, so it shouldn't be that surprising. I can't believe it's not open-world tripe! It's mad to think that in just 4 entries, Xenoblade has gone from a game that needed a petition to get released in America, to the staple RPG franchise in Nintendo's vault of IP's. OK, Shulk getting into Smash Bros definitely helped, but you know it's made it when people complain that it got a second character. I love this series, and long may it continue! Espeically with the heavy British accents that some Americans can't understand!

Try turning it off and on again.

Yeah, disconnection happened, try again.

Welp! Better put my money where my mouth is, huh?

Player's Choice tonight at 8pm.

If Fire Emblem Engage doesn't have some, then yeah, it's probably done once the Smash ones are finished. (Jury is still out on whether Disney OK'd the Sora one though)

Took them long enough. That said, with 3 being the only one that is truly the best version, I'll be waiting for a sale before biting

That's a pity. Oh well. Thanks for telling me.

Oh, I've never been one for spectator sports. But don't let me stop you having a dedicated thread. I just wanted a giggle.

I managed to get the locations of the shrines pinned on to my map by taking classes and talking to the various teachers. Along with the information that each one has 8 pins corresponding to it. I imagine they're located in the general area of the shrines. Why does every open world game insist on hiding things in these big empty places? I'm guessing you don't have an NSO subscription? Because Finizen is not hard to evolve once you know how.

Ha ha! I proved you wrong out of nothing but pure spite!

Thanks for playing along. UFA feels it's still a bit too hard for her to keep up with the damage difference. So next time she plays, I'm gonna lower the damage ratio to 0.7, and ask everyone to set themselves to 60%. It'll take a few sessions until I find the right balance. I'll also be removing Port Town Aero Dive, Paper Mario, and Magicant from the random pool, as the backgrounds are too bright, or too fast for her. The rest of the stages were fine for her. That said, if there's a week where she's not up for it, I'll be reverting to the standard ruleset I use, so don't worry. 75m will return. Thanks for working with me on this.

Game's out now. And I'm still not certain if I actually want it. If any of you do get it, let me know if it's an open world or not.

It's separate. You'll have to do it in the arena itself. Once you're in the Arena screen, you can click the bottom right icon showing what character you are to get there. Then you should see "0%" next to the player name. Set it once and it should stay that way for the remainder of the night. (Unless I change the rules midway through) And as for voice chat, we use the discord group, except we use the General category instead. I'm not entirely certain I'll be able to voice chat tonight, mind. So it might be just you and Simon.

Right, Wave 3 well and truly raced. Here's what I think. Another very consistent wave here. Not quite as great as Wave 2, but much better then the first one. And I haven't even unleashed the horrors of Custom Items yet. Exciting times ahead!

Time matches tonight at 8pm. Tonight, I'd like to ask you guys for a favour. I'm expecting my cousin, Ugh First Aid, to give Smash a go tonight. I'm certain you're aware that she's visually impaired, so she can have issues parsing smaller details. And Smash is very hectic and fast paced. Now, I'm not gonna ask you to go easy on her or something condescending like that, but I do want to tilt the odds in her favour somewhat. So tonight, I'm turning on handicaps and I'd like everyone except her to set theirs at 40%. This means you'll start each stock with 40% damage. You can set your handicap on the character select screen. However, to mitigate the increased amount of times we'll end up being KO'd, I'm also changing the Damage Ratio to 0.8. This means that everyone will suffer 20% less knockback. With these two options in conjunction with each other, I'm hoping to make UFA tougher to KO, without changing how often everyone else gets KO'd. I'm also gonna add very big and poor visibility stages to the "Never randomly picked" list when she's playing. These are New Pork City, 75m, Hanenbow and The Great Cave Offensive. Thanks for your cooperation.

It's weird, isn't it? Technically speaking, it should be under the Films thread in General Chit Chat, but Ninty themselves are plugging it in their Directs, etc, and we always have a new thread for a new Direct. Oh, I'm not helping, BTW. I'm not very enthused about the film, so I'll leave it to you lot.

Some screenshots from the Nintendo website. Digging that artstyle.

A reminder that Mario once refused to save the world from an evil demon bat because it'd cost him a million coins. The guy is not endearing!

Well, after Fire Emblem Heroes, they certainly know their audience.

So this is interesting. I'm sure some of you have noticed the change with getting hit with lightning while you're grinding. (The glider stays open now) But it's not the only change.

Revealed at the Game Awards. Careful, the trailer shows Bayo 3 footage, footage I've not seen and I was 12 chapters into that game.

Room's open now and it's half full! Discord group for voice chatting purposes.

Unless they are? Let's not forget what happened with AM2R. Get HYPE! It's not that, it's just them reacting to internal documents being leaked.